


Untouched

by Capella (Caprina)



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:09:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caprina/pseuds/Capella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella's so beautiful when she's sleeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untouched

Stella’s so beautiful when she’s sleeping. There’s a softness about her that’s very rarely visible by day, when she’s sparkling with rapid wit and self confidence. Now, with one arm stretched behind her head, small pink mouth slightly open and her neat elegance just a little mussed, she looks vulnerable, the type of woman that a man like Ray instinctively wants to protect. She’d laugh at him if he told her so, setting him straight with some sharp comment, and she’d be well within her rights.

Stella would never accept that she needs protection. She doesn’t know that it’s Ray himself who’s the threat.

He slides carefully down the bed and leans on an elbow, head resting on his hand so he can look more closely. Even from a few inches away Stella’s skin is lovely: fine-textured, golden over the curve of her shoulder and as smooth as the pale apricot silk of her chemise. Ray wants to touch her there, maybe press his lips to the pulse that beats lazily at the base of her neck, but he mustn’t wake her, not yet.

From the start it seemed incredible that she should want him, or at least the person she thought he was. He’d been so desperate for some warmth, for something that wasn’t bought with dirty money, that he hadn’t stopped to question her judgement; and Stella couldn't be blamed for seeing only what she wanted to see. Jolted out of the madness of Vegas and back into his own life, Ray had hardly been able to recognise himself. He’s still finding it difficult.

Stella shifts minutely on the mattress and mutters something barely audible. She’s smiling, a funny little inward smile. Ray wonders what she’s dreaming about. Dancing across cool marble floors, perhaps, or sipping chilled Zinfandel out on the deck in the evening breeze. She’s not hearing the echo of bullets in an empty apartment, the man’s stifled screams as they slam the trunk closed, or the high-pitched whine of fear cut off suddenly by a sickening gurgle and the crunch of breaking bone. She never wakes with her pulse racing and the taste of rancid buttermilk coating her tongue. 

It’s not that Stella’s innocent of the world. She may look like an uptown princess, but she’s hardly led a sheltered life. Ten years in the Chicago DA’s office and eleven married to a cop means she’s heard it all at second hand. Yet somehow she seems unmarked by it, the core of who and what she is unshaken. She’s read the accounts, seen the photos, but she hasn’t let it close enough to damage her, and Ray’s determined that she’ll never have to do so. 

Stella’s so beautiful when she’s sleeping: unworried, unaware, untouched by the horror that keeps Ray awake more and more often these days. Not that he wants to close his eyes. Instead, he watches Stella, memorising the details, hoping to imprint the sight of her as some kind of permanent record in his brain. 

It’ll be one more thing to take with him when he leaves.


End file.
